Xylophones are believed to have originated around 2000 BC in China. Xylophones as we know them today first appeared in Eastern Asia around the ninth century and by the sixteenth century, they had reached Europe. They are known as a wooden percussion instrument. The use of the xylophone has evolved and they are used regularly in the percussion section of orchestras.
The glass harmonica is a type of musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. It uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction. The phenomenon of rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine goblet to produce tones is documented back to Renaissance times. An instrument composed of glass vessels where one rubs the fingers around the rims dates back to the 1740's. Franklin's glass harmonica was reinvented by master glassblower and musician, Gerhard B. Finkenbeiner in 1984. Finkenbeiner Inc., of Waltham, Mass., continues to produce these instruments commercially and they are currently being used by a large number of contemporary musicians.
A verrophone is a musical instrument, invented in 1983 by Sascha Reckert, in which open-ended glass tubes are arranged in various sizes (usually in a chromatic scale, arranged from large to small, like the pipes of a pipe organ). The sound is made by rubbing one end of one or more of the glass tubes. The tubes are closer together so that chords can be played by rubbing more than one at the same time. The instrument carries more acoustical volume than the glass harmonica and other glass instruments and generally has a range from G3-C6.